I decided to launch this website because only a small minority of people are aware of the very negative consequences of corporal punishment (spanking, hitting, slapping). I believe an awareness campaign is therefore necessary and urgent to reach as many people as possible.

For twenty years I have tried to share my knowledge with others through my books and articles, but it is extremely difficult to communicate research results on this topic to parents. Parents don’t consciously want to humiliate their children; they are simply convinced that they must hit them because they received this absurd message very early on, when they themselves were hit in their early childhood.

I would therefore like to present the results of my research in a way that opens the eyes of a wide audience, especially to people who will soon become parents. I am often asked why I focus so much on corporal punishment when there are many other ways to humiliate and mistreat a child, verbally, without touching them. My answer is simple: it is true that different means of humiliating a child are still practiced, but I don’t know anyone today who recommends them. It is only spanking that is still said to be “good and necessary.” And it is this confusing conviction that is passed down from one generation to the next.

Visitors to this site who have found an opportunity to reflect on corporal punishment can then, if they wish, supplement it by reading my books where this problem is addressed in a much more in-depth manner.

Alice Miller. (January 12, 1923 – April 14, 2010)

A new step that continues Alice Miller’s commitment

At the very beginning of the 2000s, Alice Miller created this site with the intention of disseminating her knowledge. Her ambition has always been to raise society’s awareness of the dangers of our coercive practices toward children.

The “Courrier des lecteurs” (Readers’ Mail), a pioneering initiative of hers, allowed professionals, as well as young parents and all those who were marked by their upbringing, to communicate directly with her.

Now deceased and at her request, her exchanges with her readership remain available for consultation. A valuable, timeless addition to her literary work.

Her pictorial works, which long remained confidential, are offered to her readers so that everyone can, if they wish, extend this intimate connection with her world by acquiring one of her paintings.  Discover all of Alice Miller’s works.

Brigitte Oriol

Child Maltreatment and Abuse

What is it?

Humiliations, blows, slaps, deception, sexual exploitation, mockery, neglect, etc. are forms of abuse because they harm a child’s integrity and dignity, even if the effects are not immediately visible. It is in adulthood that the child who was once abused will begin to suffer from it and make others suffer. This is not just a family problem, but a problem for all of society because the victims of this dynamic of violence, transformed into perpetrators, take revenge on entire nations, as shown by the increasingly frequent genocides under atrocious dictatorships like that of Hitler. Beaten children learn violence very early on, which they will use as adults while believing what they were told: that they deserved the punishments and were beaten “out of love.” They don’t know that, in reality, the only reason for the punishments they endured was due to the fact that their parents suffered and learned violence very early on without questioning it. In their turn, they hit their children without thinking they are doing them harm.

This is how society’s ignorance remains so strong and how parents, in good faith, continue to produce harm in each generation for millennia. Almost all children are hit when they start walking and touching objects that shouldn’t be touched. This happens exactly at the age when the human brain is structuring itself (between 0 and 3 years). At that point, the child should learn kindness and love from their role models, but never, under any circumstances, violence and lies (such as: “I hit you for your own good and out of love”). Fortunately, there are some abused children who receive love and protection from “caring witnesses” in their surroundings.